Can agile methodologies typically used in software development bring more efficiency to chip design? For UC Berkeley Professor Borivoje Nikolic, the answer is, why not? Christine Young reports on the keynote at Cadence’s Mixed-Signal Technology Summit.

For his latest embedded video, Mentor’s Colin Walls focuses the camera on language standardization and use of language extensions.

Ansys’ Bill Vandermark keeps an eye on the sky in this week’s top five engineering tech articles. NASA’s Dawn probe is reaching final orbit distance just 230 miles from dwarf planet Ceres, and the space agency has chosen an imager for the 2020 Mars rover. Plus, construction is almost finished on the latest Virgin Galactic spacecraft.

On Mars, spiders might be man’s best friend: their silk shows promise as optical fibers ideally suited to detecting possible signs of life on the red planet. Rambus’ Aharon Etengoff takes a look at the study.

If you’re headed to ARM TechCon next week, Brian Fuller has the rundown of a few things not to miss. And if you aren’t (yet), discounted registration is still available for a few more days.

Cadence’s Paul McLellan attended the Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association annual conference and dinner, where Avago CEO Hock Tan presented his top ten observations of the industry.